I've been thinking about story telling as I continue work on my forthcoming book. Stories are such powerful things. People certainly love listening to stories being told and telling stories themselves.
Most of all, folks seem to adore telling stories about themselves, which I find very revealing.
When someone tells me a story that goes something like this: "I can't _____ because _____," or "I'm not _____ because _____," I know they're stuck. They're probably telling a story about themselves that once may have been true but no longer really works. The old story holds them back, yet a new story seems unwritten and, perhaps, unwritable.
Hey, want to look at your personal narrative and figure out if the story you're telling about yourself is actually moving you toward something, or holding you back?
I sure do. Ready?
So what is the story you tell about yourself? [reader does a spewing spit take] "I don't tell a story, I just live my life," the reader says with indignation.
Uh-huh.
Take out a piece of paper and make two columns. Title the first column: Now Words. In that column write words to describe your life as it is right now.
Bored
Stressed
Stuck
Routine
Honest
Kind
Generous
Write as many describing words as you'd like. Then, title the second column, "Future Words" and start writing words that describe the life you want to have. You may carry Now Words into the Future Words column. For instance:
Honest
Kind
Generous
Happy
Fun
Loving
Creative
Now, here's where you change your personal narrative. Start consciously using your Future Words in your day-to-day life, and start taking actions that bring those words to life. So, if "creative" is a part of your future, what can you do today to create? Be very specific: "I can write 10 pages. I can solve a problem. I can work in my garden. I can throw a pot. I can paint." Name your creative thing, then go ahead and do it.
We can all make lists, friends. But not all of us are adept at putting our energy in the game and actually doing. All it takes to re-write your personal narrative is awareness of what you want, backed up by purposeful action.
When you pair that up, you'll find -- pretty soon -- that you're telling a new, happier story. I promise you, it will be one you'll enjoy telling so much more than the old version. Oh, and you'll be living a happier, more successful life.
That's my story, and I'm... well, you know the rest.
Showing posts with label awareness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label awareness. Show all posts
Sunday, June 07, 2009
Sunday, January 04, 2009
While Recovering...
Since I'm still recovering from my recent surgery, I thought I'd repeat a post from January 3, 2007 -- called "Alive and Awake":
I have a little shorthand I use to describe some people. I started with “deeply unconscious”. Then I shifted to: “lacking insight into themselves and how they function in the world.” Both of these phrases were my feeble attempts to get at a larger issue – how to describe people who have no interest in (and in fact run screaming from the very idea of) personal awareness, openness and growth.
(You know who you are.)
Recently, I was running errands and had Oprah & Friends playing on my XM radio. I have to admit it: I have an Oprah crush. Sure, she’s got Steadman, and I’m not gay. But still.
I love her.
And I love her Friends. So the other day, I was listening to Dr. Robin Smith, author of Lies at the Altar: The Truth About Great Marriages, when my girl Dr. Robin said something that caught my ear. She said, “It’s time for you to step up and be a grown-up. It’s time for you to be alive and awake.”
Ka-thunk. That was it! Alive and awake! I want my friends to be alive and awake. I want my family to be alive and awake. I want my clients to be alive and awake. I want to be alive and awake.
Why would anyone want to be anything other than alive and awake? What’s the opposite there – unaware and asleep? Hmmmn. Guess if you’re unaware or asleep, you’re kinda safe. You’re insulated from feeling anything or having the scary possibility of anything in your life changing. You sleepwalk through your life, numbed to all experience.
Is that the way to live?
I’ve always wondered what babies think when they fall asleep in their car seat and wake up in their crib. Do they think, “Whoa! Weren’t we just going to the grocery store? How’d I get here?”
Maybe that’s what happens for some people at mid-life. They begin to wake up and think, “Whoa! How’d I get here?” And if they’d been awake and experiencing their 20s and 30s, maybe they’d have a partial clue.
Being alive and awake is a lot of work. The major spiritual traditions suggest that coming awake is our soul’s lifework. It was the Buddha, wasn’t it, who experienced enlightenment and became The Awakened One?
I love the words of Jesus in Matthew 7:7-8: “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”
Leading me to believe that if you never seek, you will never find. If you aren’t alive enough to seek enlightenment – asking who you are and why you are here – you’ll never be awakened.
There is an element of pain and suffering to being alive and awake that you certainly don’t have to face when you’re unaware and asleep. When you’re alive and awake you consciously open yourself to good and bad, happiness and pain, light and dark. Would the easier way be to lead a life of only the former and none of the latter?
That ain’t gonna happen, is it?
As writer Jack Kornfeld has said, you can’t live full time in a blissful state. Even the most enlightened person has to do the laundry from time to time.
Alive and awake is about balance. Think about balance for a moment: bakers add a little salt into a dessert recipe to enhance the sweetness of the treat. Balloonists add a load to their lighter-than-air craft so they can control ascent and descent. Opposites attract.
Continuing the homey aphorisms, it’s said that into every life a little rain must fall. And where would we be in a world without a little rain? Well, we’d have drought. Which would bring on famine. Then death.
Perhaps being unaware and asleep is the way some people try to avoid death. Funny, isn’t it? You go through life insulating yourself from experiences because you’re afraid of death, and guess what? You die anyway.
Because we all do.
How much better, then, to fully live until you die? How much better to turn your face up to the rain and lick the drops as they fall into your life? How much better it would be to live sensing everything, feeling everything, knowing as much as you can. How much better it would be to be alive and awake.
What a great New Year’s Resolution, huh?
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Mind Your Own Business
Imagine you're a business owner. Say you have a restaurant and you do a fair business, but you could always use more customers and revenue. One day a guy walks in and asks if you cater. You think a moment and say to yourself, "Well, food's food. I guess I can cater" and, voila! You've got a new line of business -- you're a caterer.
Imagine another person comes in to the restaurant and says, "Charlie, you're a capable person and I like you a lot. Can I pay you to wallpaper my bathroom?"
Now, wait a second. Catering is to restaurant, as wallpapering is to...what?
This is exactly the moment many small business owners get off track. Especially when money's short. A client requests something that's not particularly in your sweet spot, but you do it, thinking, "Gotta get me some money." The end result: you spend less time on your business, it suffers and, voila! You have less money.
Saying no is hard. It's particularly hard to say no to earning money when you really need the cash. But think about it this way: saying no frees up your time to earn money building your business and doing more of what you like.
How do you know if what you're being offered is a new, lucrative business opportunity or just a waste of time? Glad you asked. Here are my Three Handy Things To Ask Yourself When Offered a Business Opportunity (catchy title, huh?):
What Do I Want For My Business? As a restaurateur, I want to offer good, well-prepared meals to people at fair prices. [Just as an aside, this is the quick and easy question anyone can ask themselves to come up with a mission statement -- you just saved yourself thousands in consulting fees.]
Will This Opportunity Help Build My Business or Not? Catering allows the restaurateur to continue to offer good, well-prepared meals to people at fair prices. It's only the delivery system that changes. However, wallpapering doesn't allow the fulfillment of his mission statement in any way, shape or form.
How Do I Feel About This Opportunity? If you feel conflicted or uneasy or downright icky about it, use the Force, Luke, and listen to your feelings. If you feel uneasy before it even starts, imagine how you'll feel when six months go by and you're not cooking any meals -- just endlessly wallpapering bathrooms.
And, you're saying to me, I don't own my own business. This is not relevant to me. Oh, really?
Most of us face moments when we are offered something that we could do, but aren't sure if we should do. I'm suggesting that my Three Handy Things To Ask Yourself can be used whenever you need to evaluate doing something new.
What do I want for my life? Will this help me grow, or not? How do I feel about this?
Whenever you need to sort out options, and feel... oh, overwhelmed or uncertain or just plain icky, take the time to remember what it is you set out to do -- then, feel free to say yes or no.
Imagine another person comes in to the restaurant and says, "Charlie, you're a capable person and I like you a lot. Can I pay you to wallpaper my bathroom?"
Now, wait a second. Catering is to restaurant, as wallpapering is to...what?
This is exactly the moment many small business owners get off track. Especially when money's short. A client requests something that's not particularly in your sweet spot, but you do it, thinking, "Gotta get me some money." The end result: you spend less time on your business, it suffers and, voila! You have less money.
Saying no is hard. It's particularly hard to say no to earning money when you really need the cash. But think about it this way: saying no frees up your time to earn money building your business and doing more of what you like.
How do you know if what you're being offered is a new, lucrative business opportunity or just a waste of time? Glad you asked. Here are my Three Handy Things To Ask Yourself When Offered a Business Opportunity (catchy title, huh?):
What Do I Want For My Business? As a restaurateur, I want to offer good, well-prepared meals to people at fair prices. [Just as an aside, this is the quick and easy question anyone can ask themselves to come up with a mission statement -- you just saved yourself thousands in consulting fees.]
Will This Opportunity Help Build My Business or Not? Catering allows the restaurateur to continue to offer good, well-prepared meals to people at fair prices. It's only the delivery system that changes. However, wallpapering doesn't allow the fulfillment of his mission statement in any way, shape or form.
How Do I Feel About This Opportunity? If you feel conflicted or uneasy or downright icky about it, use the Force, Luke, and listen to your feelings. If you feel uneasy before it even starts, imagine how you'll feel when six months go by and you're not cooking any meals -- just endlessly wallpapering bathrooms.
And, you're saying to me, I don't own my own business. This is not relevant to me. Oh, really?
Most of us face moments when we are offered something that we could do, but aren't sure if we should do. I'm suggesting that my Three Handy Things To Ask Yourself can be used whenever you need to evaluate doing something new.
What do I want for my life? Will this help me grow, or not? How do I feel about this?
Whenever you need to sort out options, and feel... oh, overwhelmed or uncertain or just plain icky, take the time to remember what it is you set out to do -- then, feel free to say yes or no.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
What Do You Expect?
I have come to believe that expectations are at the root of the world's ills.
Expectations put us in a rut. Israeli expects Palestinian to hate Israeli, Palestinian expects the same from Israeli. Each acts proactively on those expectations and, boom, we have war. War that lasts for years and years.
Husband expects wife will be angry when he comes home late, wife expects he has no good excuse and, bang, we have an argument.
Woman expects she will fail because she always has, and, anyway, she's not really good enough -- who does she think she's kidding? -- and, pow, she doesn't get the promotion. Again.
All these foregone conclusions are based on expectations which may or may not be true. An Israeli might actually want to give compassionate medical care to a Palestinian. A Palestinian may wish to teach an Israeli child calculus -- but because of their underlying limiting expectations, neither do.
Author Byron Katie tells a story about a walk in the desert she once took. Katie, a woman of a certain age, was out walking alone in the desert near her home. Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed a snake. She froze.
A snake. A poisonous snake. The snake was going to bite her. She was going to be bitten by a poisonous snake and die a horrible, slow death in the desert. She'd die and no one would know what happened to her. She'd die alone, painfully, in the desert. Searchers would come eventually and find a pile of bones. She'd be all alone out there in the desert -- dead. Nothing but a pile of bones!
She opened one eye to see the demon snake who was going to kill her, and...it was a rope. Not a poisonous, ruinous snake. Just an old rope. Laughing, she stepped over it and continued her walk.
Expectations are like this. Expect to see a snake, and you will. Even if it's just a rope. You'll react to the rope as if it were a snake, when all you need to do is treat it as a rope and keep walking.
What if you lived your life if it were just an experiment? In the scientific method, there are no expectations of outcome. We do the experiment and see what happens. If it works, we keep doing it. If it doesn't, we stop. We try something new. And, there are no mistakes. What a lovely way to live!
Expectations put us in a rut. Israeli expects Palestinian to hate Israeli, Palestinian expects the same from Israeli. Each acts proactively on those expectations and, boom, we have war. War that lasts for years and years.
Husband expects wife will be angry when he comes home late, wife expects he has no good excuse and, bang, we have an argument.
Woman expects she will fail because she always has, and, anyway, she's not really good enough -- who does she think she's kidding? -- and, pow, she doesn't get the promotion. Again.
All these foregone conclusions are based on expectations which may or may not be true. An Israeli might actually want to give compassionate medical care to a Palestinian. A Palestinian may wish to teach an Israeli child calculus -- but because of their underlying limiting expectations, neither do.
Author Byron Katie tells a story about a walk in the desert she once took. Katie, a woman of a certain age, was out walking alone in the desert near her home. Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed a snake. She froze.
A snake. A poisonous snake. The snake was going to bite her. She was going to be bitten by a poisonous snake and die a horrible, slow death in the desert. She'd die and no one would know what happened to her. She'd die alone, painfully, in the desert. Searchers would come eventually and find a pile of bones. She'd be all alone out there in the desert -- dead. Nothing but a pile of bones!
She opened one eye to see the demon snake who was going to kill her, and...it was a rope. Not a poisonous, ruinous snake. Just an old rope. Laughing, she stepped over it and continued her walk.
Expectations are like this. Expect to see a snake, and you will. Even if it's just a rope. You'll react to the rope as if it were a snake, when all you need to do is treat it as a rope and keep walking.
What if you lived your life if it were just an experiment? In the scientific method, there are no expectations of outcome. We do the experiment and see what happens. If it works, we keep doing it. If it doesn't, we stop. We try something new. And, there are no mistakes. What a lovely way to live!
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Finding Joy
Are you happy? Is there joy in your life?
It is so hard for some folks to find joy. Maybe they think they aren’t entitled, or they have the feeling that it’s somehow inappropriate. It's as if once you become a grown up you must put your shoulder to the wheel, nose to the grindstone keeping a stiff upper lip, and suffer through the rest of your life. Happiness is for the indolent or the indulgent. It’s silent suffering for the rest of us.
Ah, the good old Puritan Work Ethic.
I am here to tell you that it is possible to have both work and joy. It's possible to have a balance between the two, in a perfect Joy/Work ratio. If you don't have enough joy in your life, your Joy/Work ratio might be out of balance. Here are just a few things you can do today to right the scales.
- Figure out what brings you joy. Do you know how many people have to think about what brings them joy? Plenty, that’s how many. So take a little inventory. Do you find joy with people, or with things? In certain places? With certain aromas? When do you feel joy? As long as it’s legal and doesn’t hurt anyone else, you are good to go.
- Be conscious of opportunities for joy. The Buddhists practice “mindfulness”, which includes being aware of one’s surroundings and interactions. In my own life, I realized I got great joy out of the way light plays on living plants and trees. So, I take time to look at the backlit leaves of the red maple outside my office window. I find myself driving or walking and noting the color of tulips, or the pink of the dogwood, or the earthy brown of a moldering tree. And I feel very, very joyful. Be aware of what brings you to that place of joy and be mindful of opportunities to express it.
- Make time for joy. Once you figure out what brings you true joy, whether it’s having deep conversations with friends, or watching a baseball fly out of the park, fair, on a summer afternoon, or digging in the dirt, or painting, or yoga, or love – make time for it. Don’t put off your joy until tomorrow, you Puritan you. Tomorrow, as we have all learned by now, may not come the way we think it will.
- Express gratitude. It’s been said that it’s impossible to feel both sad and grateful at the same time. Remind yourself just how grateful you are. Then, tell people you value them, journal your grateful thoughts, live in a perpetual state of gratitude. Joy will ensue.
When I was a child, I was enamored of a Hanna-Barbera show – the animated “Gulliver’s Travels.” One of the Lilliputians was a rotund little doom-and-gloom guy whose stock catch-phrase was “We’re doomed. We’ll never make it.” Although I’ve been know to have used this exact catchphrase myself from time to time, I’ve come to figure out that predicting doom usually insures it. I now avoid such predictions at all costs, and seek out the joy in a situation.
There is almost always some joy, somewhere. Real joy is so… joyful. It’s that unbearable lightness of being. It’s like bubbles in good champagne. It's in a baby's belly laugh. Dare I say it? Joy is happiness, distilled in a moment.
Yep, I used the H-word. Happiness. Don’t be frightened of the idea of being happy. Happiness is good. Happiness can change your life.
Dr. Jon Haidt, noted researcher at the
To make the quickest jump in H, you can focus on your C and your V. But to dramatically shift the texture and tenor of your life, attack your S. Learning to see the glass as half full, regardless of the circumstances, will profoundly raise your H.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Thinner Peace
A few weeks ago I wrote about Being Perfect. One of the common ways many of us strive for perfection is in our weight or body shape. We think: If only I could lose 10-20-30-40 pounds, then life would be perfect. Truth? If you did lose 10-20-30-40 pounds, you'd just be skinner... with the same old problems.
This pursuit of perfection is endless -- and those of us in pursuit often pay a high emotional and psychological toll. It's like this: we weigh too much, so we can never be enough. That is a stuck mindset. It's a limiting place. It's no fun. It really hurts.
It's time for the anguish and suffering to stop.
It’s time for Thinner Peace.
Among the clatter of competing weight loss approaches, arrives leading life coach, author, O Magazine columnist and friend of mine, Dr. Martha Beck. In The Four Day Win: End Your Diet War and Achieve Thinner Peace, Martha provides a funny, thoughtful, erudite, practical approach to losing and maintaining your best body size. It's a diet book for all of us who think diet is a four-letter word.
Even if you don’t usually buy diet books, don't you think you'd love a book with chapters like “Eat Whatever The Hell You Want”, "How To Stop Eating When You Can't Stop Eating" and "How Not To Be A Big Fat Liar"?
What I love about this book is that Martha gives a thorough, intelligent explanation of how the mind works (would you expect anything less from a gal with three degrees from Harvard?) -- and bases her approach on cutting edge research. She tells you not only “how” – but gets you to understand the all important “why”. You’ll find out how traditional diet programs based on deprivation, willpower and suffering work on our minds and help us stay heavy.
Martha undertook this work in as a consultant to Jenny Craig, to help them better understand the psychological aspects of weight loss. Her key finding, after working with plenty of Jenny Craig clients as well as her own private coaching clients, is this: when you set up a famine situation in your brain, you are undermining your ability to lose weight. Psychologically, when you say, "I cannot have even one cookie. If I have a cookie, I will be bad. I will have no willpower and be a loser if I eat just one cookie. Nope, no cookies for me!" – you actually program yourself to only think about what you're missing: cookies. And if you have the opportunity, you'll satisfy your cookie famine with a cookie binge.
I know that where I put my attention will grow more central to my life. Martha’s approach plays on the same idea. If you focus on what you can’t do, can’t eat, can’t be, you’ll be stuck there and won’t even be aware of what you can do, can eat or can be.
Martha suggests that we have three aspects of our consciousness: the impulsive overeater in all of us is our Wild Child; the Dictator is the punishing, judgmental part. To really achieve Thinner Peace, you have to take the third way -- you have to be The Watcher. The Watcher expresses loving kindness toward the recklessness of the Wild Child as well as the demands of the Dictator, but asks "why" frequently. Why does the Wild Child want the ice cream sundae? Why is the Dictator punishing me for having a french fry? It's the Watcher who is forgiving, self-loving and self-nurturing. And in charge.
For most people, this shift away from having the Wild Child or Dictator rule the roost is a significant move. The reason your diet has not worked in the past is because you’ve been ruled by impulse or guilt. You have eaten to soothe your emotions. But under the Watcher, you can be in a loving, caring, responsible position. And the Watcher helps you lose weight because you are free to just be – and eat when your body tells you you’re hungry. If you’re sad, the Watcher will notice that and turn your attention to lifting your mood with something other than food.
Here’s a brief excerpt from the book, and a good indication of why I gush about Martha Beck: “Almost all of us assume there's only one way to lose weight: by willpower, by white-knuckle resistance, by forcing the body with an aggressive, adversarial, disciplinarian mind. This can be achieved sometimes, though not often. Maintaining it long-term? I don't think it can be done. I've seen numerous clients deploy incredible discipline, using their Dictator selves to trap, dominate, and starve their Wild Child selves. Losing weight this way is as draining as keeping a violent criminal pinned to the floor with sheer force. But even if you manage to do it, you can't hold your own Wild Child in a hammerlock for the rest of your life. The minute you get tired, distracted or sick, the Dictator loses control, and the Wild Child goes into a feeding frenzy.
"That's the whole reason I wrote this book. Simply going on a diet program, without changing your mental set, causes backlash and weight gain. This is an inevitable reality, based on the way our brains and bodies are designed. But if you use 4-day win techniques to become a Watcher and bring yourself to Thinner Peace, your brain changes, as well as your body. Weight loss happens without backlash or resistance."
Thinner Peace. Count me in. Because it's time for the war to stop.
This pursuit of perfection is endless -- and those of us in pursuit often pay a high emotional and psychological toll. It's like this: we weigh too much, so we can never be enough. That is a stuck mindset. It's a limiting place. It's no fun. It really hurts.
It's time for the anguish and suffering to stop.
It’s time for Thinner Peace.
Among the clatter of competing weight loss approaches, arrives leading life coach, author, O Magazine columnist and friend of mine, Dr. Martha Beck. In The Four Day Win: End Your Diet War and Achieve Thinner Peace, Martha provides a funny, thoughtful, erudite, practical approach to losing and maintaining your best body size. It's a diet book for all of us who think diet is a four-letter word.
Even if you don’t usually buy diet books, don't you think you'd love a book with chapters like “Eat Whatever The Hell You Want”, "How To Stop Eating When You Can't Stop Eating" and "How Not To Be A Big Fat Liar"?
What I love about this book is that Martha gives a thorough, intelligent explanation of how the mind works (would you expect anything less from a gal with three degrees from Harvard?) -- and bases her approach on cutting edge research. She tells you not only “how” – but gets you to understand the all important “why”. You’ll find out how traditional diet programs based on deprivation, willpower and suffering work on our minds and help us stay heavy.
Martha undertook this work in as a consultant to Jenny Craig, to help them better understand the psychological aspects of weight loss. Her key finding, after working with plenty of Jenny Craig clients as well as her own private coaching clients, is this: when you set up a famine situation in your brain, you are undermining your ability to lose weight. Psychologically, when you say, "I cannot have even one cookie. If I have a cookie, I will be bad. I will have no willpower and be a loser if I eat just one cookie. Nope, no cookies for me!" – you actually program yourself to only think about what you're missing: cookies. And if you have the opportunity, you'll satisfy your cookie famine with a cookie binge.
I know that where I put my attention will grow more central to my life. Martha’s approach plays on the same idea. If you focus on what you can’t do, can’t eat, can’t be, you’ll be stuck there and won’t even be aware of what you can do, can eat or can be.
Martha suggests that we have three aspects of our consciousness: the impulsive overeater in all of us is our Wild Child; the Dictator is the punishing, judgmental part. To really achieve Thinner Peace, you have to take the third way -- you have to be The Watcher. The Watcher expresses loving kindness toward the recklessness of the Wild Child as well as the demands of the Dictator, but asks "why" frequently. Why does the Wild Child want the ice cream sundae? Why is the Dictator punishing me for having a french fry? It's the Watcher who is forgiving, self-loving and self-nurturing. And in charge.
For most people, this shift away from having the Wild Child or Dictator rule the roost is a significant move. The reason your diet has not worked in the past is because you’ve been ruled by impulse or guilt. You have eaten to soothe your emotions. But under the Watcher, you can be in a loving, caring, responsible position. And the Watcher helps you lose weight because you are free to just be – and eat when your body tells you you’re hungry. If you’re sad, the Watcher will notice that and turn your attention to lifting your mood with something other than food.
Here’s a brief excerpt from the book, and a good indication of why I gush about Martha Beck: “Almost all of us assume there's only one way to lose weight: by willpower, by white-knuckle resistance, by forcing the body with an aggressive, adversarial, disciplinarian mind. This can be achieved sometimes, though not often. Maintaining it long-term? I don't think it can be done. I've seen numerous clients deploy incredible discipline, using their Dictator selves to trap, dominate, and starve their Wild Child selves. Losing weight this way is as draining as keeping a violent criminal pinned to the floor with sheer force. But even if you manage to do it, you can't hold your own Wild Child in a hammerlock for the rest of your life. The minute you get tired, distracted or sick, the Dictator loses control, and the Wild Child goes into a feeding frenzy.
"That's the whole reason I wrote this book. Simply going on a diet program, without changing your mental set, causes backlash and weight gain. This is an inevitable reality, based on the way our brains and bodies are designed. But if you use 4-day win techniques to become a Watcher and bring yourself to Thinner Peace, your brain changes, as well as your body. Weight loss happens without backlash or resistance."
Thinner Peace. Count me in. Because it's time for the war to stop.
Sunday, February 04, 2007
Clarity of Purpose
I’ve been running into a lot of stressed out, tense people recently. They all seem to be singing that old refrain from The Guess Who, “I got, got, got, got no time.” And these are women who are at home with their kids! Add in office politics for those attempting to do both career and parenting, and you’ve got stratospheric stress levels.
Thank goodness you’re reading this today. Because this is for you stressed out souls – especially all you people who think asking for help is a sign of weakness. Ahem.
OK, I'll tell you how to live life with no tension, no stress. Lean into your computer screen and pretend I’m whispering this next part, just like Connie Chung.
Know why you’re doing what you’re doing.
Simple, huh?
Let’s look at it in action. In a typical week, Cheryl wakes up two mornings at 3:45am to get two of her kids to swim practice. She’s in a carpool so she only drives the kids to the pool one of those mornings. The other morning, she tries to go back to sleep but usually ends up oversleeping and wakes up just as the kids return from the pool. She wakes her third child, scrambles to get everyone fed, lunches made, homework in backpacks, then tears out of the house to make the early tutoring sessions scheduled for her kids. She has not showered nor has she had anything to eat.
While the kids are at school, she does laundry, walks the dog, goes to the grocery store, returns library books, shops for her elderly mother, volunteers at the kids’ schools (the three of them are in two different schools), and makes phone calls for a fundraiser. At 3pm, she races to school – late, again. One child goes to tennis, one to dance, the other to piano lessons. On Wednesdays, it’s karate, basketball and art. At 7pm Cheryl pulls out chicken nuggets and pasta for her kids and they begin two hours of homework. She checks all their work and corrects their mistakes. On Tuesday and Thursday nights the schedule changes when her oldest child has hockey practice. Dinner those nights is from a drive-thru, eaten in the back of the car. Cheryl’s husband comes home from work around 8:30pm, except for the nights he’s traveling or at his son’s hockey games.
At 10 pm, Cheryl gets her kids into bed and falls, half dead, into her own bed. Her husband, a night owl, stays up watching TV or surfing the Internet until 1am. At dawn the next day, it starts all over again.
Sound at all familiar? Should be. Because most of Cheryl’s friends are just like her.
Here's something I know to be true: where you put your attention will grow more important in your life. So where is Cheryl’s attention? On her kids. And we will all say, “Yep, your kids should be your Number One priority.” But friends, there’s priority and there’s over-focus.
That’s why having clarity of purpose is vital to living a happy life. When you read Cheryl’s story, what would you say is her priority? To be self-sacrificing, have no life of her own, and do everything for her children? ‘Cuz that’s what’s she’s doing. She’s not eating, not bathing, not really in much of a relationship with her husband. She’s got no time with friends, no hobbies, no passions.
Why would Cheryl do this?
Henri Nouwen, noted spiritual writer, suggested that busyness is our way to quiet the yearnings of our heart. It's often difficult for women to articulate their own needs or passions -- society sends a strong message that doing so is selfish and not womanly. Cheryl would tell you, after her second glass of wine, that she knows that she keeps busy so she won’t have to think about it. “If I look at why I do things, I might have to change something,” she’d acknowledge.
And we all know change is scary.
So, Cheryl stays purposefully busy – so she doesn’t have to think about what she wants, and nothing has to change. "Most people prefer the certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty" wrote therapist Virginia Satir. And Cheryl would agree.
When Cheryl coasts, she takes the path of least resistance. She doesn’t have to ask her husband to be a partner (he might say no, he might think I'm not capable, he might leave, we might get divorced, what would people think?). She doesn’t have to give her children boundaries and limits (they might miss an opportunity to find something they’re good at, they might hate me, they might ridicule me, what would people think?). She doesn’t allow her children to be independent (it’s faster to do it myself, they won’t need me, I’ll have to get a job, I haven’t had a job for 12 years, I have no skills).
Cheryl’s decision tree goes something like this:
At the core of many of our actions is this thought: “I am so flawed that no one can possibly love me (I can’t even love myself).” So we attempt to cover our “flaws” thinking that if we move fast enough, and produce enough, our flaws are not going to be noticeable. Even to ourselves.
This is where coaching can really help. A good coaching relationship allows all you Cheryls (and Toms and Susans and Harolds) out there to take some time to look at who you are and why you do what you do. Unlike therapy (which I am a huge fan of, having logged plenty of my own couch time), coaching will help you take specific steps to move forward toward a new way of living. A therapist diagnoses and treats psychological problems, often looking at the past as a guide. It's very important and life changing work. As a matter of fact, I often work with clients who are simultaneously seeing a therapist – and it’s great! These people are usually very open to change and make terrific progress.
And, guess what? People have successfully changed their lives without alienating their children or divorcing their spouse! People get balance in their lives without losing anything important – just by focusing on what’s really important.
Knowing why you're doing what you're doing sounds so simple. But it requires honesty, openness and a willingness to change. You have to understand yourself so you can say no to that which keeps you stuck in a rut, and yes to that which brings you joy and allows you to grow.
What does it take to get out of your hectic and purposefully busy life? Again, it's simple.
It’ll start when you say to yourself, “I can’t go on like this anymore. This is not a fun, happy life” – that’s when you know it’s time to start making changes.
That, friends, is when you ask for help. That’s when you call me.
Thank goodness you’re reading this today. Because this is for you stressed out souls – especially all you people who think asking for help is a sign of weakness. Ahem.
OK, I'll tell you how to live life with no tension, no stress. Lean into your computer screen and pretend I’m whispering this next part, just like Connie Chung.
Know why you’re doing what you’re doing.
Simple, huh?
Let’s look at it in action. In a typical week, Cheryl wakes up two mornings at 3:45am to get two of her kids to swim practice. She’s in a carpool so she only drives the kids to the pool one of those mornings. The other morning, she tries to go back to sleep but usually ends up oversleeping and wakes up just as the kids return from the pool. She wakes her third child, scrambles to get everyone fed, lunches made, homework in backpacks, then tears out of the house to make the early tutoring sessions scheduled for her kids. She has not showered nor has she had anything to eat.
While the kids are at school, she does laundry, walks the dog, goes to the grocery store, returns library books, shops for her elderly mother, volunteers at the kids’ schools (the three of them are in two different schools), and makes phone calls for a fundraiser. At 3pm, she races to school – late, again. One child goes to tennis, one to dance, the other to piano lessons. On Wednesdays, it’s karate, basketball and art. At 7pm Cheryl pulls out chicken nuggets and pasta for her kids and they begin two hours of homework. She checks all their work and corrects their mistakes. On Tuesday and Thursday nights the schedule changes when her oldest child has hockey practice. Dinner those nights is from a drive-thru, eaten in the back of the car. Cheryl’s husband comes home from work around 8:30pm, except for the nights he’s traveling or at his son’s hockey games.
At 10 pm, Cheryl gets her kids into bed and falls, half dead, into her own bed. Her husband, a night owl, stays up watching TV or surfing the Internet until 1am. At dawn the next day, it starts all over again.
Sound at all familiar? Should be. Because most of Cheryl’s friends are just like her.
Here's something I know to be true: where you put your attention will grow more important in your life. So where is Cheryl’s attention? On her kids. And we will all say, “Yep, your kids should be your Number One priority.” But friends, there’s priority and there’s over-focus.
That’s why having clarity of purpose is vital to living a happy life. When you read Cheryl’s story, what would you say is her priority? To be self-sacrificing, have no life of her own, and do everything for her children? ‘Cuz that’s what’s she’s doing. She’s not eating, not bathing, not really in much of a relationship with her husband. She’s got no time with friends, no hobbies, no passions.
Why would Cheryl do this?
Henri Nouwen, noted spiritual writer, suggested that busyness is our way to quiet the yearnings of our heart. It's often difficult for women to articulate their own needs or passions -- society sends a strong message that doing so is selfish and not womanly. Cheryl would tell you, after her second glass of wine, that she knows that she keeps busy so she won’t have to think about it. “If I look at why I do things, I might have to change something,” she’d acknowledge.
And we all know change is scary.
So, Cheryl stays purposefully busy – so she doesn’t have to think about what she wants, and nothing has to change. "Most people prefer the certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty" wrote therapist Virginia Satir. And Cheryl would agree.
When Cheryl coasts, she takes the path of least resistance. She doesn’t have to ask her husband to be a partner (he might say no, he might think I'm not capable, he might leave, we might get divorced, what would people think?). She doesn’t have to give her children boundaries and limits (they might miss an opportunity to find something they’re good at, they might hate me, they might ridicule me, what would people think?). She doesn’t allow her children to be independent (it’s faster to do it myself, they won’t need me, I’ll have to get a job, I haven’t had a job for 12 years, I have no skills).
Cheryl’s decision tree goes something like this:
If I acknowledge what I feel, people will be mad --> they will leave me --> I will be all by myself --> I will die all alone --> I am not good enough for anyone to love --> I do not matter.
At the core of many of our actions is this thought: “I am so flawed that no one can possibly love me (I can’t even love myself).” So we attempt to cover our “flaws” thinking that if we move fast enough, and produce enough, our flaws are not going to be noticeable. Even to ourselves.
This is where coaching can really help. A good coaching relationship allows all you Cheryls (and Toms and Susans and Harolds) out there to take some time to look at who you are and why you do what you do. Unlike therapy (which I am a huge fan of, having logged plenty of my own couch time), coaching will help you take specific steps to move forward toward a new way of living. A therapist diagnoses and treats psychological problems, often looking at the past as a guide. It's very important and life changing work. As a matter of fact, I often work with clients who are simultaneously seeing a therapist – and it’s great! These people are usually very open to change and make terrific progress.
And, guess what? People have successfully changed their lives without alienating their children or divorcing their spouse! People get balance in their lives without losing anything important – just by focusing on what’s really important.
Knowing why you're doing what you're doing sounds so simple. But it requires honesty, openness and a willingness to change. You have to understand yourself so you can say no to that which keeps you stuck in a rut, and yes to that which brings you joy and allows you to grow.
What does it take to get out of your hectic and purposefully busy life? Again, it's simple.
It’ll start when you say to yourself, “I can’t go on like this anymore. This is not a fun, happy life” – that’s when you know it’s time to start making changes.
That, friends, is when you ask for help. That’s when you call me.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
On Being Perfect
I’m working on a book about overcoming perfectionism. It’s going to be perfect.
Just kidding.
Frankly, I see so many people in my coaching practice whose major sticking point is their drive/need/desire/compulsion to be perfect. They can’t act unless they can be assured that the outcome will be perfection.
This search for perfect has a partner – procrastination. Perfection seekers postpone action until the all the pieces are in place to hypothetically insure success. However, when all the perfect pieces inevitably fail to fall into place, nothing happens. Ever.
That’s certainly one way to be safe: don’t do anything, then you can’t possibly do anything wrong. Oh, boy, do perfectionists hate being wrong. Why? Our psychologist friends say it’s rooted in self-esteem, anxiety and control issues. I’ve heard more than one perfectionist say that if they are imperfect then people will know they are a fraud.
Well, all I know is that many perfectionists I see are stuck, unable to act and unable to feel fulfillment.
And they confuse excellence with perfection.
I got a call this week from a loving, devoted mother whose 12 year old daughter is on a select volleyball team. The team is so good, in fact, that they’ve been to nationals. The athletic daughter, let’s call her Carly, announced that she needed to quit volleyball because she wasn’t “perfect” at it. The mother asked me, “What should I do? She’s really talented, and enjoys the game, and her teammates elected her captain. She’ll be miserable if she quits.”
OK, blurting happens. In coaching, blurting happens more often than I ever expected. I blurted to the mom, “Who wants to be a Soviet gymnast? Who wants to be an athletic automaton who executes every move with textbook perfection? Where's the thrill in that?”
I was on a roll. “Look at Tiger Woods. He’s probably the greatest golfer the game has produced. But he’s not perfect. I’ve seen him hook the ball far to the left, or slice to the right. He’s in the rough plenty of times. I’ve seen him double bogey.
“But what Tiger has – what makes him great – is his ability to improvise. He famously used his driver to make a difficult putt from the fringe. He’ll turn his club backwards to hit a shot. He knows his game, he knows his skills and has the confidence to use anything he’s got to play the game.”
Improvisation takes heart. It takes soul. But most importantly, improvisation takes an awareness of who you are and an understanding of what you bring to the situation.
I talked with Carly’s mom about how to reframe the girl’s drive to excel from “having to be perfect” to “getting to be creative”. If the planned play is Dig, Set, Spike, but the setter is out of position, it takes creativity for the spiker to still make the point. And when a player makes an unbelievable point, what happens? The crowd goes wild.
That's not perfection, that's excellence.
Ironically, improvisation can have perfect results. What you say? Without planning, without plotting, without a safety net – you can be perfect?
Yes. You can be. To prove my point, I’ll ask you one question:
Have you ever heard Ella Fitzgerald scat?
Go to this web address http://www.smithsonianjazz.org/class/fitzgerald/ef_class_1.asp and listen to any of the audio clips.
Ella’s in the moment, using her magnificent voice, tremendous range and keen understanding of jazz to create one-of-a-kind, indelible perfection.
Letting go, trusting your talents, trusting your instincts, trusting your training… and improvising – that’s how to productively channel your pursuit of excellence. That’s how to live a full and fulfilling life.
I am working on a book about perfectionism, and it’s not going to be perfect. It’s going to be whatever it’s going to be. What I’m bringing to it is awareness of my experience and an understanding of how to overcome the limits of perfectionism.
Won’t that be perfect?
Just kidding.
Frankly, I see so many people in my coaching practice whose major sticking point is their drive/need/desire/compulsion to be perfect. They can’t act unless they can be assured that the outcome will be perfection.
This search for perfect has a partner – procrastination. Perfection seekers postpone action until the all the pieces are in place to hypothetically insure success. However, when all the perfect pieces inevitably fail to fall into place, nothing happens. Ever.
That’s certainly one way to be safe: don’t do anything, then you can’t possibly do anything wrong. Oh, boy, do perfectionists hate being wrong. Why? Our psychologist friends say it’s rooted in self-esteem, anxiety and control issues. I’ve heard more than one perfectionist say that if they are imperfect then people will know they are a fraud.
Well, all I know is that many perfectionists I see are stuck, unable to act and unable to feel fulfillment.
And they confuse excellence with perfection.
I got a call this week from a loving, devoted mother whose 12 year old daughter is on a select volleyball team. The team is so good, in fact, that they’ve been to nationals. The athletic daughter, let’s call her Carly, announced that she needed to quit volleyball because she wasn’t “perfect” at it. The mother asked me, “What should I do? She’s really talented, and enjoys the game, and her teammates elected her captain. She’ll be miserable if she quits.”
OK, blurting happens. In coaching, blurting happens more often than I ever expected. I blurted to the mom, “Who wants to be a Soviet gymnast? Who wants to be an athletic automaton who executes every move with textbook perfection? Where's the thrill in that?”
I was on a roll. “Look at Tiger Woods. He’s probably the greatest golfer the game has produced. But he’s not perfect. I’ve seen him hook the ball far to the left, or slice to the right. He’s in the rough plenty of times. I’ve seen him double bogey.
“But what Tiger has – what makes him great – is his ability to improvise. He famously used his driver to make a difficult putt from the fringe. He’ll turn his club backwards to hit a shot. He knows his game, he knows his skills and has the confidence to use anything he’s got to play the game.”
Improvisation takes heart. It takes soul. But most importantly, improvisation takes an awareness of who you are and an understanding of what you bring to the situation.
I talked with Carly’s mom about how to reframe the girl’s drive to excel from “having to be perfect” to “getting to be creative”. If the planned play is Dig, Set, Spike, but the setter is out of position, it takes creativity for the spiker to still make the point. And when a player makes an unbelievable point, what happens? The crowd goes wild.
That's not perfection, that's excellence.
Ironically, improvisation can have perfect results. What you say? Without planning, without plotting, without a safety net – you can be perfect?
Yes. You can be. To prove my point, I’ll ask you one question:
Have you ever heard Ella Fitzgerald scat?
Go to this web address http://www.smithsonianjazz.org/class/fitzgerald/ef_class_1.asp and listen to any of the audio clips.
Ella’s in the moment, using her magnificent voice, tremendous range and keen understanding of jazz to create one-of-a-kind, indelible perfection.
Letting go, trusting your talents, trusting your instincts, trusting your training… and improvising – that’s how to productively channel your pursuit of excellence. That’s how to live a full and fulfilling life.
I am working on a book about perfectionism, and it’s not going to be perfect. It’s going to be whatever it’s going to be. What I’m bringing to it is awareness of my experience and an understanding of how to overcome the limits of perfectionism.
Won’t that be perfect?
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Alive and Awake
I have a little shorthand I use to describe some people. I started with “deeply unconscious”. Then I shifted to: “lacking insight into themselves and how they function in the world.” Both of these phrases were my feeble attempts to get at a larger issue – how to describe people who have no interest in (and in fact run screaming from the very idea of) personal awareness, openness and growth.
(You know who you are.)
Recently, I was running errands and had Oprah & Friends playing on my XM radio. I have to admit it: I have an Oprah crush. Sure, she’s got Steadman, and I’m not gay. But still.
I love her.
And I love her Friends. So the other day, I was listening to Dr. Robin Smith, author of Lies At The Altar, when my girl Dr. Robin said something that caught my ear. She said, “It’s time for you to step up and be a grown-up. It’s time for you to be alive and awake.”
Ka-thunk. That was it! Alive and awake! I want my friends to be alive and awake. I want my family to be alive and awake. I want my clients to be alive and awake. I want to be alive and awake.
Why would anyone want to be anything other than alive and awake? What’s the opposite there – unaware and asleep? Hmmmn. Guess if you’re unaware or asleep, you’re kinda safe. You’re insulated from feeling anything or having the scary possibility of anything in your life changing. You sleepwalk through your life, numbed to all experience.
Is that the way to live?
I’ve always wondered what babies think when they fall asleep in their car seat and wake up in their crib. Do they think, “Whoa! Weren’t we just going to the grocery store? How’d I get here?”
Maybe that’s what happens for some people at mid-life. They begin to wake up and think, “Whoa! How’d I get here?” And if they’d been awake and experiencing their 20s and 30s, maybe they’d have a partial clue.
Being alive and awake is a lot of work. The major spiritual traditions suggest that coming awake is our soul’s lifework. It was the Buddha, wasn’t it, who experienced enlightenment and became The Awakened One?
I love the words of Jesus in Matthew 7:7-8: “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”
Leading me to believe that if you never seek, you will never find. If you aren’t alive enough to seek enlightenment – asking who you are and why you are here – you’ll never be awakened.
There is an element of pain and suffering to being alive and awake that you certainly don’t have to face when you’re unaware and asleep. When you’re alive and awake you consciously open yourself to good and bad, happiness and pain, light and dark. Would the easier way be to lead a life of only the former and none of the latter?
That ain’t gonna happen, is it?
As writer Jack Kornfeld has said, you can’t live full time in a blissful state. Even the most enlightened person has to do the laundry from time to time.
Alive and awake is about balance. Think about balance for a moment: bakers add a little salt into a dessert recipe to enhance the sweetness of the treat. Balloonists add a load to their lighter-than-air craft so they can control ascent and descent. Opposites attract.
Continuing the homey aphorisms, it’s said that into every life a little rain must fall. And where would we be in a world without a little rain? Well, we’d have drought. Which would bring on famine. Then death.
Perhaps being unaware and asleep is the way some people try to avoid death. Funny, isn’t it? You go through life insulating yourself from experiences because you’re afraid of death, and guess what? You die anyway.
Because we all do.
How much better, then, to fully live until you die? How much better to turn your face up to the rain and lick the drops as they fall into your life? How much better it would be to live sensing everything, feeling everything, knowing as much as you can. How much better it would be to be alive and awake.
What a great New Year’s Resolution, huh?
(You know who you are.)
Recently, I was running errands and had Oprah & Friends playing on my XM radio. I have to admit it: I have an Oprah crush. Sure, she’s got Steadman, and I’m not gay. But still.
I love her.
And I love her Friends. So the other day, I was listening to Dr. Robin Smith, author of Lies At The Altar, when my girl Dr. Robin said something that caught my ear. She said, “It’s time for you to step up and be a grown-up. It’s time for you to be alive and awake.”
Ka-thunk. That was it! Alive and awake! I want my friends to be alive and awake. I want my family to be alive and awake. I want my clients to be alive and awake. I want to be alive and awake.
Why would anyone want to be anything other than alive and awake? What’s the opposite there – unaware and asleep? Hmmmn. Guess if you’re unaware or asleep, you’re kinda safe. You’re insulated from feeling anything or having the scary possibility of anything in your life changing. You sleepwalk through your life, numbed to all experience.
Is that the way to live?
I’ve always wondered what babies think when they fall asleep in their car seat and wake up in their crib. Do they think, “Whoa! Weren’t we just going to the grocery store? How’d I get here?”
Maybe that’s what happens for some people at mid-life. They begin to wake up and think, “Whoa! How’d I get here?” And if they’d been awake and experiencing their 20s and 30s, maybe they’d have a partial clue.
Being alive and awake is a lot of work. The major spiritual traditions suggest that coming awake is our soul’s lifework. It was the Buddha, wasn’t it, who experienced enlightenment and became The Awakened One?
I love the words of Jesus in Matthew 7:7-8: “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”
Leading me to believe that if you never seek, you will never find. If you aren’t alive enough to seek enlightenment – asking who you are and why you are here – you’ll never be awakened.
There is an element of pain and suffering to being alive and awake that you certainly don’t have to face when you’re unaware and asleep. When you’re alive and awake you consciously open yourself to good and bad, happiness and pain, light and dark. Would the easier way be to lead a life of only the former and none of the latter?
That ain’t gonna happen, is it?
As writer Jack Kornfeld has said, you can’t live full time in a blissful state. Even the most enlightened person has to do the laundry from time to time.
Alive and awake is about balance. Think about balance for a moment: bakers add a little salt into a dessert recipe to enhance the sweetness of the treat. Balloonists add a load to their lighter-than-air craft so they can control ascent and descent. Opposites attract.
Continuing the homey aphorisms, it’s said that into every life a little rain must fall. And where would we be in a world without a little rain? Well, we’d have drought. Which would bring on famine. Then death.
Perhaps being unaware and asleep is the way some people try to avoid death. Funny, isn’t it? You go through life insulating yourself from experiences because you’re afraid of death, and guess what? You die anyway.
Because we all do.
How much better, then, to fully live until you die? How much better to turn your face up to the rain and lick the drops as they fall into your life? How much better it would be to live sensing everything, feeling everything, knowing as much as you can. How much better it would be to be alive and awake.
What a great New Year’s Resolution, huh?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
![[tylertorment]](http://s3.amazonaws.com/twitter_production/profile_images/77089905/22_mini.jpg)
